“I am small among beasts, but my grievances are many and great. I am chosen by men as a playmate for their children, so that the mothers may be free to attend to what they call their ‘necessary work’ in peace and without interruption. How am I rewarded? “The children whom I strive to amuse drag me ceaselessly around, pull my tail and pinch my ears, blow in my face and jerk my sensitive whiskers; and if I remonstrate with voice or teeth or claws, I am beaten and kicked and tossed out of doors without even the privilege of trial by jury. “I catch the rats and mice which infest men’s houses, and then when they forget to give me milk which is so necessary to prevent the ill effects which follow a diet of meat and I help myself delicately to a few laps of cream, I am abused as if I had committed a mighty and unpardonable sin. “They call me a necessity, yet they drown my beautiful kittens, or carry them off in bags and cast them helpless and forlorn upon the mercy of a cold and cruel world. And then men presume to say that they are made after the image of God, and have been divinely appointed masters of the world! What blasphemy! What blind stupidity! Words fail me in view of these appalling facts.” Half the assembly was in tears before poor pussy had finished her category of woes. A fly buzzed forward with impulsive haste, and spoke with a little rasping voice: “We flies are small; but we are mighty. We remove mountains of dirt for uncleanly men, and how do they reward us? They catch us in traps and drown us with boiling water. They snare our feet with treacherous fly-papers, and after laughing at our struggles to get free, burn us without mercy. Small boys torture us with pins, or pull off legs and wings for what they call ‘fun.’ If they do not want us about them, why do they make the filth which necessitates our presence? That is a conundrum beyond my solving. I leave it for this wise assembly to answer.” The fly buzzed back to a sunny spot, and an unwieldy hog ambled forward. “‘As greedy as a hog.’ ‘As lazy as a pig.’ ‘As fat as a pig.’ ‘No more sense than a hog.’ Have you never heard such expressions as these fall from the lips of men? They shut us up in little dirty pens where we must needs be lazy, since we cannot run about. They continually tempt us with food, and the more we eat the better they like it, since it produces the fat which they afterwards deride. If we weary of dry corn or thin slop, and break through some convenient hole which their own carelessness has left, and help ourselves to the tender cabbages and peas of their gardens, they chase us with yells and sticks and stones, and send their dogs to make devilled ham of us before we are dead.” His pun so amused the assembly that they were convulsed with laughter. After vainly waiting several minutes for silence the hog returned calmly to his place, convinced that he had at least presented his grievances in a striking manner.